[Discuss-gnuradio] Salon article -- off topic

From:

Brian_Whitaker

Subject:

[Discuss-gnuradio] Salon article -- off topic

Date:

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:40:42 -0800

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spectrum/index2.html
Referenced on slashdot...
Eric -- I haven't been here very long, but my assumption about this code to
demod two FM stations at once is NOT an example of how you can demod two FM
stations "on a single frequency" as stated by David Weinberger in this Salon
article.
With that, I'm having trouble understanding David Reed's point here.
Bandwidth is limited to the energy you can stuff into a photon, and in that
respect, is limitless... and I agree that "interference" can be the cause of
a crummy receiver (poor linearity, image rejection, etc). But this fellow is
talking about a situation where everyone can be transferring bazillions of
bits to everyone else on the planet, and as long as "the system" was set up
right, everything would be fine.
Mr. Claude Shannon has something to say about this, and to my knowledge, his
has only been cheated by using spatial separation (tricks like beam-forming
antennas and sectorization and such).
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
If someone on the s/w side understands something I don't about this, please
email me directly, since this is more than a little off-topic.
Brian Whitaker